Thursday, February 6, 2014

Being the Church: The Point of Worship

Why do we come together on Sundays? The obvious answer is that we come together to worship God. If that's the reason - and it is - then that sets aside other reasons for coming together on Sundays. So, we don't come together 'to learn more about God' or 'to be encouraged to face another week' or 'to be inspired' or 'to understand the doctrines of the faith better' or any other substitute. We come together to worship the living and true God. Or to quote a Psalm, we come to 'give to the Lord the glory due his name'. Worship is to be God-centered. It's about honoring God as the God that He is. It's all about Him. And that means that it's not about us. It's about how He feels as a result of our worship and not about how we feel after we're done. It's about telling Him (in our prayers and songs) of our love and dependence and our gratitude for all that He has given us by the Gospel. It's about listen to Him (in the reading of the Scriptures and the preaching) so that we can do a better job obeying Him. By our speaking and by our listening we giving God what is His due. By speaking and listening we are worshiping. 

But if worship is about something else, something other than worshiping God, then there is a problem, a very big problem. And, sad to say, there is a very big problem in too many churches these days. 

We need to be sure that what happens on Sundays never becomes anything other than worshiping God. There will be changes in how we worship as we understand better what it means to worship God. But the point of it all must never change. Worship is all about God.